In this Book
- Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture
- Book
- 2006
- Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
summary
What do you call 600 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? Marc Galanter calls it an opportunity to investigate the meanings of a rich and time-honored genre of American humor: lawyer jokes. Lowering the Bar analyzes hundreds of jokes from Mark Twain classics to contemporary anecdotes about Dan Quayle, Johnnie Cochran, and Kenneth Starr. Drawing on representations of law and lawyers in the mass media, political discourse, and public opinion surveys, Galanter finds that the increasing reliance on law has coexisted uneasily with anxiety about the “legalization” of society. Informative and always entertaining, his book explores the tensions between Americans’ deep-seated belief in the law and their ambivalence about lawyers.
Table of Contents
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- Illustrations
- pp. xiii-xiv
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xv-xvii
- Introduction
- pp. 3-28
- Part One: The Enduring Core and Its Recent Accretions
- 2: The Lawyer as Economic Predator
- pp. 64-96
- 3. Playmates of the Devil
- pp. 97-113
- 4. Conflict: Lawyers as Fomenters of Strife
- pp. 114-141
- Part Two: The New Territories
- 6. Betrayers of Trust
- pp. 157-178
- 7. The Lawyer as Morally Deficient
- pp. 179-195
- 8. Lawyers as Objects of Scorn
- pp. 196-209
- 9. “A Good Start!”: Death Wish Jokes
- pp. 210-249
- Part Three: The Justice Implosion
- 10. Enemies of Justice
- pp. 233-248
- 11. Only in America?
- pp. 249-260
- References
- pp. 357-411
Additional Information
ISBN
9780299213534
Related ISBN(s)
9780299213503, 9780299213541
MARC Record
OCLC
607582230
Pages
448
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2006